May 24, 2010

On Friday some friends and I took The Needle Shop's Sewing 101 class together. It's fantastic. People who have never seen a sewing machine in real life march proudly out of class four hours later brandishing a pillow with a zippered cover. I had put zippers in pillows before, but never correctly so I always hoped nobody would look under there. Now I'm a kung fu zipper master. This is the pillow I made in class with Kokka camera fabric.

And then I went home and re-covered every pillow in our living room. The solid orange and the orange with bird print are from IKEA (purchased early April, but it looks like they still carry it) and the brown and black geometric print was a clearance table runner, also from IKEA. The fuzzy chocolate brown stuff is from the fabric store up the street. All I know about that is that fuzz went everywhere when I made those two, including into my coffee.

Lately I've been obsessed with making pillow cases. It's so hard to find the right colors or even just finding a pillow with a cute color that isn't priced like an arm & a leg. I love the camera fabric & the orange & black ones!! it really looks pretty!! What a cute idea for a sewing class. I need to learn how to sew better because these things are just too cute!!

Do it! You'll learn a lot, have fun, and you'll be super proud of yourself. It's worth the money, because your new skills will translate to lots of other projects, not to mention you'll come out with a fabulous pillow. Confidence, knowledge, and inspiration are well worth the class price.

Don't you just love Ikea fabric!!?? We recovered our Broyill Brasilia dining room chairs in one of their fabrics. They look fabulous if I do say so myself. I taught myself how to put invisible zippers in pillows, I wonder how these are done? I also made placemats and napkins out of coordinating fabrics from Ikea. The best part its... most of its $5.99 per yard and its a weight that could go upholstery or otherwise.

very impressed that you put your new-found skills into action! I'm the worst for learning stuff and then not acting on it until the new skills have gone sort of rusty...then I get rage! and I love your selection of fabrics and vision of how they go together. I need to work on that.